According to the Las Vegas Sun, the board of directors of Las Vegas Sands, owners of The Venetian and The Palazzo on the Las Vegas Strip as well as several casinos around the globe have been sued for mishandling the company.

Throwing open another open topic but I got this little nugget to kick around from reader Jeff in OKC:

"Is Bellagio cursed? I don't know of any curse, or any Indian burial grounds, etc., but, I think there's some bad mojo at the Southwest corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Boulevard. Since the Dunes was built there in the 50's, all kinds of unusual problems have plagued the property. Design and construction problems abounded there in the 60's and 70's. But ownership seems to be the biggest victim of strange things there. From legendary mob control, to the Japanese financial collapse that led to Steve Wynn getting the land. Spectacularly, for our purposes, Steve Wynn built palatial offices for Mirage Resorts, which he had to give up when he got in a cash bind and had to sell out in 2000. I understand MGM moved their HQ to Bellagio after the buyout, and Terry Lanni took over the same office. Lanni, as well, suffered an equally amazing fall from grace in just a few days during November, 2008. If I were Jim Murren, I think I'd move HQ back to the MGM Grand. Any thoughts?"

It seems a local group in Macau is none too happy with the attention on Las Vegas Sands problems. As he said, fascinating stuff. I love how these guys are peeved about a perceived preference for Singapore.

What I'd love to see now is a lawsuit between Las Vegas Sands and protesters that want to picket outside Venetian and Sands Macau. That would be serendipitous.

Just the other day as I was walking outside Encore, I was thinking to myself that it didn't look like much glass had been added to the tower at FBleau since December. Well, photographic evidence proved otherwise - my mind was just playing tricks on me and the glass is indeed rising.

When I checked out the visitors center there a few weeks back, there was a lot of construction activity in the low-rise portions. It is telling though that so far I don't think they will even sell you a condo - perhaps a chance they want to keep their options open?

The visitors area includes a large model of the complex, which does look interesting, as well as a model room. The room itself was nicely appointed - you can see Schaeffer and THEHotel written all over its style. Not quite as big as I would have expected, but then again, neither are the rooms at ARIA.

As some already know, I spent some time last week at Encore Las Vegas for what Wynn Resorts called 'Media Week'. Over the course of 5 days of events, various forms of media were invited to come stay at the hotel and participate in all sorts of events from back-of-house tours to eating in the restaurants.

For the past several weeks, rumors of a potential sale of The Mirage have been making the rounds. Personally, I've heard at least two different versions and one from a credible source, though no one that has claimed direct knowledge of a deal.

Today, Howard Stutz in the RJ has a piece that made the front page 'Breaking News' section on the persistent rumors:

In all the versions of the story I keep hearing, the buyer is always Penn National, with Pinnacle Entertainment a distant second chance possibility. The rumored price is typically between $1.2 and $1.5 billion.

MGM Mirage has consistently said that they evaluate all offers but they have nothing to announce.

Still, does this sale make sense for MGM Mirage? Without a dollar figure, it's hard to say but as Stutz indicated, if liquidity is enough of an issue to force this, I would have expected other assets to be divested first, such as the 50% stake in Borgata or perhaps something like Luxor. Of course, The Mirage may be the only asset that this buyer wants (and can afford - I'm sure they'd love Bellagio).

The Mirage has recently been significantly re-worked and would be a great Las Vegas starting point for a company like Penn.

And to those that keep hoping Steve Wynn would buy the hotel back - no chance (unless the price was super-low). He's looking one direction and that's forward.

UPDATE: As stated in the comments, the RJ link is dead and the home page now includes a note saying Penn Natl is not interested... At this time...

Tonight, on the live Web cast, I was very surprised to learn that this blog was a winner in the 2008 Trippies for 'Best Vegas Blog'.

The competition was very stiff - these are all names you know and you probably read all of them (you should). I've been lucky enough to meet a few and call them friends - they all publish on a regular basis and give a lot to their readers.

The new year's ongoing lead story will likely be CityCenter as it moves toward either completion or modification in 2009. The speculation about Harmon is followed today by Norm in the RJ raising issues about Veer:
"There are rumblings that MGM Mirage is close to announcing the status of the beleagured City Center project, including whether several buildings will be completed. There's talk that The Harmon, the Light Group's boutique condo-tel, with 400 hotel rooms and suites and about 200 luxury condominiums, will be delayed. The bigger concern, I'm told, is the central iconic tower, which was designed to lean about 22 degrees but is now almost double that because of a cabling issue. ...""Norm"